Smoking High
by reminiscent-afterthought
Summary: In a world that's becoming slowly digitised, grass and trees are some of the only things still left. Until addicts (or terrorists) light a bunch of successive fires. Because fire can't touch anything else...right?


**A/N:** Written for a few challenges:

Diversity Writing Challenge, f21 - write in third person omnipresent narration  
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Finding Ellie (event) - write a oneshot over 3000 words in which fire is a prominent motif  
The Mix it, List it Challenge, Finding Ellie prompt (above)  
Halloween Trick or Treat Bag (2015), day 17 - reveal a hidden identity

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 **Smoking High**

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Two kids have set fire to his yard.

He runs a safe distance away, safe in the knowledge that the house and its things will still be standing when he come back. Only the grass will go. Maybe the few plants that had managed to grow in the interim. Maybe a few materialistic things. Most of them are already gone, though. He doesn't even know what in his house is from the original world, now. The rest of it, almost all of it, is digital.

He's digital too, but not digital enough. He'll get burnt if the fire picks up enough, and it might. It's autumn now and autumn means lots of grass, alive and dead. Summer is when fires can naturally start, but autumn is when man-made (or kid-made, as things are) fires burn the brightest. So they might catch. There's no way of knowing, in this world. The house is digital after all and data won't catch fire.

Sometimes, it's just the kids trying to prove how backwards the world has gotten. What's the point of all the fire, all the smoke, when it can't destroy anything? And that's not the only thing. Hurricanes can't destroy the world. People with hammers and axes and even bulldozers can't destroy the world. There's not enough left in it that's natural. Even the people are digitizing, but people are slow. The babies are about sixty percent. The teenagers are about fourty.

He's a little less than average. A little older than the ones who dropped the flaming branch. Good on them for finding a branch, he supposes. But they kind of have to keep the trees until the humans are all digital, otherwise the air won't be breathable for those who aren't.

He stands at the edge of the court, now. He can see the flames, rising as though they were licking the sides of the house - they can't, they don't. But the flames rise up anyway. It looks almost beautiful.

There are a few kids who get high watching such things.

He rathers they leave that kind of thing to their own houses. But the grass does take a bit to grow back. The addiction's one of the last thing that sticks around from the old world. There's no drugs anymore. No petrol, even. That got phased out about three years ago, when they used up the last of it.

It's nice to look at, but he can't imagine himself ever lighting someone else's yard on fire to satisfy a non-existent yearning to see it again.

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Today, the house across the street is on fire. There's a wide strip of digitised lane between them, so he doesn't worry about it spilling into his yard. He doesn't have any grass to catch, anyway. Nothing except the digital stuff. Nothing that won't catch fire.

The neighbour comes over to him. They sit in the living room together, watching the fire through the glass. The digitized glass won't let the smoke in. The fire can pass through, but there's nothing inside either. Once upon a time, he had a treasure box with stuff from his parents. Childhood stuff. Real stuff. They burnt years ago, though. When the first fire in the street happened. When people were angry at the digitisation. But they hadn't been able to change things. Only accept them.

Now, they sit. They watch. No kids watching from the hill this time. Just the flames crawling, black to red, red to orange, orange to yellow sparks reaching up to the skies. It lasted for an hour or two, then it faded and the grey smoke clouded things.

'Stay for the night,' he offers. 'It's not good to be inhaling the smoke.'

'Thanks,' the neighbour replies, and accepts.

They hook up to the data stream for dinner that night, then sleep. The neighbour gets a bed especially extracted for the occasion. He keeps it as a data file otherwise. It takes up less space.

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Two days later, it's the house two days down. He has to stay inside again, and now he's a little annoyed. And confused. If it's the kids again, they're being awfully lazy. And clumsy. It's not a world without laws, after all. Three fires in the same street within a week is bound to summon the police. Not that people, in general, see the police.

Some say they're digital, completely digital. Not even real humans, but digital constructs like the original prototypes who'd first connected the two worlds. Others say they're the locals of the other world, the one that had merged with this one to provide the digital framework. He doesn't really care, so long as there never comes a time in which he needs to know. And he doubts it. He's not on that track.

Instead, his specialty is data compression. He'll probably wind up a programmer, compressing large data files into smaller ones and compacting the material world. The abstract one will remain large. It has to remain large, after all, to be experienced. But reality can be carried around in one's pocket. Or not even that. His lecturers claim that there'll be a little terminal inside their brains a hundred or so years from now, containing the data for their house, their car, and everything that essentially belongs to them.

That way, bioterrorists won't be able to get to them. It'll be easier for the digi-terrorists, probably. For all the data to be in one compact place. And for the government as well. But that's the job of hackers, to maintain the global firewall and keep the digi-terrorists from getting their roots into the system. There's no-one who's managed a decent job yet. The digitized stuff is as safe as can be. The biological, natural remnants of the old world are another matter though. Not that the police are lax in dealing with them. They won't let go until there's no longer a need for such measures and the resources have run out. It's the way it was with the fuel. It's the way it is with everything, after all.

As the smoke covers the streets and clouds the glass, he does wish he could be more digitized than he currently was. He has only so many things to do at home after all, even with the knack of compressing them so more things fit in the storage he has available to him.

He works on compressing them further. Things he can afford to lose, in case he damages it irrevocably in the process. He checks his space first. He actually has a bit extra so he copies one of the larger, complex files. Files like that are always a pain to compress, and decompress as well. And a compressed file is only good if it can be restored to its original state without any complications. And he hooks up to the data stream three times a day, and sleeps the night away because the sky is one of the last things that will become digitized, when the human body is able to live without it.

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Three days later, they're cleared to go outside again and it's not a moment too soon. The house, digital though it may be, had started feeling rather stuffy. The girl next door says she'd opened her windows the day before. 'Couldn't breathe.' She fanned her face, then coughed. She's a few years older than him. Probably twenty to thirty percent digitized. It sounds like she's managed to get some smoke into her lungs.

That's another thing with the digital age. It can't seem to cope with the old time sicknesses. They've been split into two categories now: biological and digital. Biological microorganisms all have vaccines against them, and digital screens. Digital ones mostly have vaccines as well, though of a different kind. But then there's the stuff that aren't infection, and aren't stuff like cancer that they can trick into a black hole of data and then whisk away into nothingness. Smoke in the lungs is still a hazard. Not a big one, but its smoke. It's air, essentially. It can't be digitised, and it doesn't need to be either once humans are no longer dependent on oxygen and all those other molecules they breathe day in and out. Except they still are, and they probably still will be for another ten years or so. The human body is slow that way. The whole world will be waiting for them before it can move on. But at least the world does wait for them. Other species throughout history haven't been so lucky.

So there's smoke in her lungs. And because of that, her ID's acting up. She can't start the car. She can't get back into her house either, once she's left it. He offers her a ride in his car instead, and she gratefully accepts. The cars, after a few mishaps when they first came out, are designed with a numbing field targeting the back seat, just for cases like this.

They can't use the numbing field all the time, after all. It causes the data to break down, but it's okay for a few trips and it stops the bio-interference from making her fall out of the car or him lose control of it.

They make it to the hospital without any mishaps, and she goes over to the ever-shrinking bio-sickness ward. He drives further out, because he's been stuck at home for almost a week and he needs a change of pace.

For food, there's the data stream. For water, there's print outs. The data stream can handle that as well for people whose bodies are over half digital, but not yet for him. It'll take him another two years to reach that point. But before that was the technology of print outs. Printing food, water, other basics and some of the more sophisticated stuff as well. Everything you needed to get through to the end of junior high school was available in a printer and its little computer monitor. Once you start specialising, then you need more specialised stuff as well.

Like how he needs higher processing power now, and lots of storage. He floats around for a bit. Window shops. They're all digital too, of course. But there's data, and then there's data that's been made into something. The theory exists that you can change anything into anything in this world. Anything that's not essentially biological, that is. However no-one has managed it, once it has taken its form and been released for public use. In a way, that's a goal for digital terrorists, to change the infrastructure that has grown around them, to show off its inherent vulnerability. It's a vulnerability that was initially feared, but the fear has somewhat passed now, in the knowledge that no-one has succeeded.

He, of course, has no interest in succeeding, or even attempting, such a thing. He wants to further it, if it's within him to do so. If he's capable of it. He might be one of the ones who won't make it to the fully digitised world. It might be a hundred years from now. It might also be much closer – and however close or far it is, he knows it will never go back. They've discarded and forgotten too much of the old world to be able to go back. The raw biological bits are almost all gone, save the flora that maintains and filters their air supply.

They've got a bit of ocean left too, and feeling nostalgic, he decides to plan a trip there for his next break.

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They have a break for a week, and then there's another fire. Next door this time, and he has to evacuate as well even if there's nothing else that will burn. There's the concern that the fire will find bits of grass humans can't. There's the concern that there's something biological in the house after all. There's the concern that it'll cause the internal, heat proof, systems to malfunction and then he'll be unprotected. Up to his lungs in smoke, or worse, burned.

His house is fine, of course. So's the neighbour's, and the neighbour's neighbour who actually does have grass and that does manage to catch fire too. The three of them wind up having to sleep in a centre for the night and it's one of the most boring places to be. Sure, they have a data stream, and the basic printer. But they don't have a whole lot else.

So the three of them can only really chat and play games. They print out a deck of cards. Decide gin rummy should be on the end of their list so they can get some actual drinks in (because the digital age has also modified the drinking laws, now that their bodies are more capable earlier in life). So they start with a game called wipe out first. Not the sort of game they normally play with three players, but they take the odd cards out with the jokers and it works out well. He can't wipe out his hand, but he doesn't come in last either. Though it's probably his fault the neighbour's neighbour wound up losing every match. He did force him to pick up the pile quite a few times.

After that are more classic games. Go fish, snap, five hundred. And then finally gin rummy, until they're all tired and pleasantly drunk. They remember to check that they've printed hangover remedies first. They have.

And when they wake up in the morning, they use those remedies. And then do damage – or lack of damage – control of their houses when it's clear to go back.

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A statement goes out. It turns out their area isn't the only one under attack. Even a park's been hit and that means bad things for their air supply. The statement lists the properties that have been hit, the number of people (like the girl who'd gotten smoke into her lungs) who'd been hospitalised because of it, the number of people temporarily displaced – and he saw his own name on the list there too.

And then there was someone who'd been permanently displaced because they managed to hit the terminal. The supposed to be heat proof terminal.

People start to panic when they hear that. Biological fires shouldn't be getting that much fuel. Not even the park fire can have that much fuel and the park fire didn't damage any systems at all.

The statement ends in explaining it's all the work of terrorists. They're still not sure which, but the gauntlet is out there. If you're caught aiding them, your neck is in just as much trouble.

That's fine, because he doesn't intend to help them at all.

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Someone contacts him, wanting some encrypted files compressed. He does get a few freelance jobs like that, and he's got no reason not to accept this one. Or so he thinks.

They're encrypted, but he has to de-encrypt them to compress them. Semantics, so he hadn't bothered explaining that bit to the client. He'd simply asked if it would still be compressed by the end and he'd said "sure" – because it would be. He was just opening it up in the interim.

Until he sees what's inside it. Fire. Not real fire, but fire made from data. And he understands why the higher-ups hadn't been sure what type of terrorists they were, why they'd managed to fry a terminal when biological fire shouldn't be capable of anything close.

It's not biological fire. Its data fire and it's been in development. That's why the original fires didn't do nearly as much damage. Why they mimicked biological fires. Or…maybe they'd wanted to mimic biological fires.

He should contact the higher-ups. He knows he should, but there's two reasons why he can't. Its fascinating stuff he's holding in his hands. And if his client is a terrorist, they'll be keeping an eye on him. He can't be that clumsy. He's already de-encrypted the data and that might be bad enough in their eyes. Though he's had to to compress it back again.

Lucky the digital age has advanced so far, though. He should be able to placate them. And he doesn't doubt they have memory modification software if he can't. He'll even suggest it to them. As long as he's alive and no worse off by the end of it –

Actually, that might be a good idea. He won't even remember the danger he almost got himself in, then. Or has gotten himself in to.

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It takes him three days and one necessary (and one not entirely necessary trip to the shops to buy a few chips and a new data card that doesn't actually do what it's meant to (or so he acts, hopefully convincing) before he manages to get the data compressed into the chip they'd given. It takes a little longer because they want it replicable. He'll have to hand those chips over too, he thinks.

He does. And he's right about them being none too pleased with de-encrypting the file. 'Hey, you wanted it compressed,' he shrugs. 'That requires manipulating it.'

They test out his chips, all while keeping a firm eye on him so he can't go back to the shop and return the data card. They keep an eye on him until the newsline of more fires come through, more terminals damaged, more panic.

And the guy who meets him this time, pixelating his face like the first two, laughs and clasps him on the back. 'Why not join us?' he suggests. 'We won't have to babysit you for eternity, that way?'

'Excuse me?' Recruiting isn't on his list of differentials. He's not even sure what's implied he might be amiable to the idea.

Though, he has to admit, compressing biology into data is something he'll never get to do in the line he's heading in. The field's too wide. They have job specs too narrow. Too many possible jobs.

'You'll get to breathe smoke every day, if you like,' says the guy, like it's a clincher.

'I'm not an addict,' he replies. _Or a terrorist_ , but he doesn't say that bit out loud.

'Your loss,' the guy shrugs. 'Smoke's one of the few things left in the world that make you feel alive.'

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Three weeks later, his girl neighbour a few doors down gets her chance to repay the favour and drive him to the hospital, because he's somehow gotten smoke into his lungs.

He almost curses the fact that he never did get around to returning the data card (and passing on the precious cargo it held), until he passes a fire on his way back and realises he can breathe easier thanks to it.

Two pixel guys are there. He's not sure if he's met them before, but they recognise him. 'Change your mind?' one asks.

'About the fire…maybe.' He stares at the blue stream rising up and assumes that's the terminal gone bust. It's been over a month, he thinks. These guys might actually be getting somewhere. 'About the job offer…not quite yet.'

They clap him on the back and part. He thinks they must be pretty damn sure he'll joint them and not betray them, or they're simply high from the smoke.


End file.
